The Best Indie Movies of 2011 So Far: “Sound of My Voice” and “The Interrupters” Top criticWIRE

The Best Indie Movies of 2011 So Far: "Sound of My Voice" and "The Interrupters" Top criticWIRE

With the midway point of 2011 just days away, it’s a good time to look at how the year’s films have fared on criticWIRE thus far. At film festivals such as Cannes, Sundance, Tribeca, SXSW and Berlin, and as films are released theatrically, indieWIRE polls over 100 critics and bloggers for letter grades and review links.

Of any film to either be released theatrically in 2011, or have their film festival premiere in 2011, 16 managed to score “A-” level averages. These include foreign-language narratives João Pedro Rodrigues’s “To Die Like a Man,” Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s “Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives,” Michelangelo Frammartino’s “Le Quattro Volte,” and Maryam Keshavarz’s “Circumstance.”

There were also two English-language narrative films in the very top ranks: Zal Batmanglij’s “sound of my voice” and Sean Durkin’s “Martha Marcy May Marlene.”

All 30 of these films debuted at a film festival, with 13 at the Sundance Film Festival, and another eight at the Cannes Film Festival (Only two of the eight came from this year’s festival. The others were theatrically released holdovers from the 2010 fest.) The remaining third was divided between SXSW (three), Venice and Toronto (two each), and Tribeca and New Directors/New Films (one each).

The poll’s timing obviously skews the numbers toward festivals like Sundance and Cannes; we expect by year’s end the crop of films debuting at Venice and the Toronto International Film Festival will enjoy considerable placements.

Here’s how we broke it down:

The lists are divided into three categories: English-language narrative films, foreign-language narrative films, and documentary films.

The film must have either been theatrically released in 2011, or have had their film festival premiere in 2011.

The averages are as of June 26, 2011

Only films with four or more grades are included.

Click on the links provided for a full breakdown of grades, and for a complete list of films on criticWIRE, check out the criticWIRE homepage.